JoandWilly

geez is that really true about these that they only have broods of 3 to 8 fry???

where else have you seen them ryanjury??

Yeah they are mighty small at the mo... well ours are anyways, like only 2cm, couldn't believe they were actually selling fish that small, we dont sell our's till they are what i call big enough, depending on the size they grow up to, with most of our malawi's thats when they are at a sexable age.

Yeah we can't wait for them to grow up, we would have brought 12 but paying 90 bucks for 6, 12 would have been a bit to exspensive.

Hey, just been at the mt roskill hollywoods and they have small demasoni if anyones interested, we just brought six and theres probably a dozen left, was quite surprised to see them didn't think you could get them here.

There's a great place in hamz called captain compost, they have all types of rock's under the sun, they are located in frankton if anyones wondering.

Our malawi's always get random black dots on them, have read that a diet high in spurlina will cause them, and we feed them quite a bit of spurlina flake so i'm guessing thats what it is.

The way i have mine set up and has been for months without cleaning, is: Bottom: course filter pad, with plastic balls on top of that Middle: medium filter pad with noddles on top of that Top - did originally put filter wool there but it affects the flow to much so now have coral pieces in there. That way has worked great for us but its up to you really how you do it, i'd use the top tray for disposable things like filterwool and carbon and the bottom to for permant stuff so i didnt have to take them out.

I was going to bleach them over night but we have no bleach, and supermarkets aren't within walking distance. I've been letting them sock so might just pour boiling water over them and stick them in a tank with a couple of guppies and see what happends.

Do you think a bottle sterlising cleaner would work, it says its a chlorinated cleaner, and used for sterlising bottles for home brew, or should i just stick with lots of salt.

yeah, definitally dont clean everything in your fish tank all in one go, do regular 10-20% water changes a week, clean out your filter WITH TANK WATER, when the flow is affected by the gunk, and vacuum our gravel either every water change or atleast once a month i would recommend, theres no harm in taking out larger rocks, ornaments etc and scrubbing them to get rid of algae.

What would be the best way to garuantee rocks from the garden aren't going to contaminate the fish tank at all, i was planning on putting them in a drum full of water for a few days and tipping in a bag of salt to kill any nasties in there, but what other ways (other than boiling) would be good to make sure there are no pesticides or herbicides on them???

They are a pretty docile fish, male gets quite big say about 12 inch's long, females only get to about 2/3 that, and they breed like crazy, have up to as much of a 1000 fry a time, same care as any other south/central american cichlid, pH of around 7-7.6. If you want more info go to www.cichlid-forum.com.

Yeah i would like to know where to get the dolimite, but yes the white marble chips are cheap, we brought 2 bags and have done a 5 foot, a 3 foot and a couple of our fry tanks all with an inch of it on the bottom.

if the water has to high of a pH and to alkaline, it can cause the fish's scales to kinda melt off and there fins to fall apart, but 7.8 isn't to bad, except for maybe the neons and maybe the silver dollar not to sure about them.

If you dont have any test kits of your own (pH, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates) take some water into your closest fish store and get them to test the water for you, some charge a lil and others don't. After you've tested that and it all comes back fine might have to look for any deseases.

I think these are possibly a kenyi cross, as i remember that when we brought them ryan said they had been breed as kenyi's so i think maybe the kenyi female was breeding with a random blue zebra or something, would explain the blueness and yello/light orange that some of them get on them. Oh well all are going up for sale today.

Thought it was a male kenyi cause it was changing to orange colouration, but now found out that like a few other malawi's if there are no males present a female will take on the males colourations or breeding females will take them on to make other fish think they are males. Hmmm other fish we have are the random cross's i asked about the other day, hornets, aruatus, estharae, dophins, giraffe haps, e.yellow ummm textillis or something, albino something, greshaki i think thats about it.

Well there was only 1 fish in the tank and was only feed the minimal amount of food twice a day, we do have a problem of the tap water her being extremely soft and can range in pH from 5.5 up to 9 over a day. I prefer not to add things to the water in ways of chemicals would prefer to add natural substance's to the tank's to get the pH up, i've found the coral rock is good but i've found it buffers the water more than raising the pH. So i'm gonna get some limestone and try that.

I just found what we thought was our male kenyi holding a mouth full of eggs, what would he/she cross breed with as there are no other kenyi's in the tank, anyways since i dont support cross breeding just stripped her in the tank and let everyone else feast on the eggs. But any suggestions on what they might cross-breed with would be good.

our tang tank is 115L and our malawi is about 350L (and way to small) but yeah might just put some in the cannister filters or something, will sort something out.

How much does limestone change the pH by, cause if it keeps it in the 8-9 range i'll build all the rockery out of limestone rocks. But dont really want a pH anything greater than 9, that'll be just a bit to high for malawi's. I think it could be the rocks in the tanks at the moment that could be lowering the pH as the tanks that dont have those rocks in it have a higher pH that the others.

Just tested all our tanks, most of the malawi ones are ranging from 7.5 to 7.8 and our tang's tank is at 8.0 but one tank is at 5.7 (tested it twice) i was completely shocked since that was the tank that usually always had the best pH, All our tanks have curshed coral either in them or in the cannister filters, and some of them have argonite (the white sand) in them, whats another way to boost them pH up a bit. Without using chemicals.

yeah mine are blue with the darker lines but then they get yellow around the edges of there fins, and search to find out what they are for ages and can't find anything.

Hope you can help us id these fish, came to us as kenyi's but 100% sure they aren't and have a colony of about 8 and have started breeding. http://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c222/joandwilly/Fish/